24 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



as Lord Durham represents it and, on the other, it may be found that 

 there were several causes for the relative retardation of Canadian 

 prosperity, besides the question of land grants. 



The system of land tenure in vogue in the United States in Lord 

 Durham's time was not older than 1830. The method of disposing 

 of public lands had previously been altered with frequency. After 

 the colonial period, and during the period of Confederation, lands 

 were only sold in huge blocks. In 1796, U.S. public lands were ordered 

 to be sold at auction in lots of not less than nine square miles at a 

 minimum price of not less than $2 per acre, long periods of credit 

 being given. In 1814 labourers appealed to Congress on the ground 

 that they could not obtain land excepting at exorbitant prices while 

 the sales of great blocks to speculators continued. Only in 1830 was 

 a measure adopted which provisionally endowed squatters with 

 certain rights. This measure became permanent in 1842. It was 

 not really until the passing of the Homestead Law of 1862 that a 

 popular measure of land reform was adopted. ^I* Lord Durham's 

 encomiums upon land administration in the United States are thus 

 scarcely deserved. The "activity and bustle" which he noticed 

 resulted from the concentration of people in towns, due on the one 

 hand to the development of capitalistic industry, and on the other 

 to the impossibility of obtaining land which the labourer without 

 capital experienced; in other words, to the forced proletarianization 

 of the labourers. Some of the Italian economists, e.g., Ricca Salerno, 

 Loria and Rabbeno, as well as the German agronomical writer. Max 

 Sering, have sharply criticized the land policy of the United States 

 at this period. They regard the land policy as being in perfect 

 accordance with the commercial policy of the United States. Large 

 speculative enterprises were, they say, deliberately encouraged by 

 Congress and the labourers who petitioned in vain in 1814 for allot- 

 ments of 160 acres of land at 12| cents per acre were compelled to 

 resort to the towns for employment. Industry was thus forced on 

 two sides — on the side of protection and on the side of refusal of 

 land grants in order to prevent the competition of agriculture in the 

 struggle for working hands which free or cheap land would have 

 implied.25 The consequence of this "overaction in all the depart- 



2^For the land policy of the United States, see importantly Sering, Max., Die 

 landwirtschaftliche Konktirrenz Nordamerikas in Gegenwart und Zukunft, Leipzig, 

 1887, pp. Ill et seq. For a summary statement see Rabbeno, Ugo, The American 

 Commercial Policy, London, 1895, pp. 176-178. 



^*The association between the division of property in land into large shares 

 and the growth of arts and manufactures is noticed by Malthus. 



